Sian Mackay

The Austrian aristocrat Baron Rudolph von Ripper (1905–60) was acclaimed internationally as an artist, military hero and bon viveur before his astonishing legacy was unintentionally erased by history. Fortuitously, the recent discovery of a dossier of his letters and photographs at an uninhabited Spanish villa has led to its resurrection in this gripping biography.

Von Ripper lived – and loved – with brio and befriended many colourful luminaries in Paris, Berlin and the USA whilst engaging in a lifelong struggle to expose through art and resistance the vulgarities and brutalities of fascist rulers. His riposte to imprisonment and torture by the Nazis was to enlist as an Allied war artist and intelligence officer in WWII. 

A Cold War CIA agent during the 1950s, Mallorca was von Ripper’s ‘haven of peace and beauty’ – and also a hotbed of spies and ex-Nazis. Pursued by his wartime enemies, he died at his Mallorcan villa in mysterious circumstances in 1960.